Thursday, February 27, 2014

Our Home Story

03/06/2014

A short time ago I did a post titled "Our Home", this wasn't so much a blog post as a short entry. I was sooo excited that we had become homeowners that I wanted to share a picture of our first house with you and update you on the fact that finally we had signed and had keys in hand. Now that we have moved in and I have some time I'm re-editing this post. I want to include more information, I'm re-titling this "Our Home Story".

Here is our home, minus the car and the boat its all ours:

At 20 and 21, my husband and I have become homeowners. I am proud to say we did it all on our own, no co-signers, no help with a down payment, nothing! At 1523 sq ft. this house is the largest place we have lived in since we moved out of our parents and in together two years ago!

We bought this house for only $85,500, which was under market value for our area. We, of course, had an inspection and while the house has some issues none were deal breakers, and all were minimal given the age of the house (it was built in 1975).

After quiet a bit of research on my end I found out all about the USDA rural development loan. The house we bought qualified, and the loan allowed us to put 0% down and wrap all closing costs up into the loan, so our loan is around $87,500 after negotiated closing costs from the sellers and credits from our lender. Well I don't recommend everyone get a 0% down it worked well for us since it freed up our saved up money.

Prior to purchasing we used online resources like bankrate calculators to try to determine what a comfortable loan for us would be. My husband is the sole provider, I'm fortunate that I don't have to try to work while being a full time college student. We are also hoping to start a family so we plan on being a one income household for a while. For us staying within our price point was our #1 priority (along with good schools), 2 bathrooms was probably our 2nd, land our 3rd!

We got a 4.25% interest rate on our loan, dropping our house payments from the $625 we had been spending on rent to $580? that we will spend on our mortgage payment including insurance and taxes! While our hope is to pay it off early, to avoid paying so much extra in interest, even if we don't I think financially we made a wise decision.